But if you don't know what caused it...you don't know what didn't cause it...so you need to do something about it, just like you did with your Tikka?
Alan
New Forest Negligent Discharge
- Thread starter tomblincoe
- Start date
Alan
Sonicdmb73
Well-Known Member
There’s a reason they stopped using Land Rovers in theatre. They didn’t stop bullets and bombs (took far too long but that’s another story).
The usual assumption is that it was caused by a branch/clothing etc. Especially if you can’t replicate it by cycling the bolt/working safety etc.
baguio
Well-Known Member
Jackal's didn't stop bombs either sadly. Whenever that comes up I remember these two:
Corporal Dean Thomas John and Corporal Graeme Stiff killed in Afghanistan
It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the deaths of Corporal Graeme Stiff and Corporal Dean John of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in Helmand province on Sunday 15 March 2009.
They helped me out on a job for 10 days and were blown up the next day. Top guys taken way too soon. They always remind me how precious life is and how easily it can be snuffed out!
Yes I am sure the circumstances can give you clues to a diagnosis. But we are all working on assumptions I suppose...
But Malc did say it was the "second time it had done this" Which I took to mean it had gone off when the stock was touched both times...if the circumstances were different they were not mentioned.
Alan
Agreed, I would hate to think that anyone who has an ND is labelled as untrustworthy or idiotic....I’m a great believer that a very high percentage of the shooting community will have at one point or another had one!
Absolutely...I am sure Malc's client was mortified and his unfortunate experience can only have helped prevent disasters by prompting other people who have a weird event to get their rifle checked "just in case".
I am so lucky that my own idiot negligent discharge was just about the least dangerous you could have...but it certainly made me even more aware of my fallibility.
I was muddling around freeing off the slightly reluctant magazine indexing detent with my Air Arms S410 FAC PCP and ended up cycling it...no pellets in the mag...but nonetheless at one point I happened to pull the trigger in the sure and certain knowledge that it had been decocked....only for it to go off...no pellet, but there could have been...at least muzzle awareness meant there would only have been a hole in the back of the sofa and not the dog.
Cold sweat time with a bit of imagination...
What is that old chestnut about more accidents happen with "unloaded" guns?
Alan
Sonicdmb73
Well-Known Member
A sad loss.Jackal's didn't stop bombs either sadly. Whenever that comes up I remember these two:
Corporal Dean Thomas John and Corporal Graeme Stiff killed in Afghanistan
It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the deaths of Corporal Graeme Stiff and Corporal Dean John of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in Helmand province on Sunday 15 March 2009.www.gov.uk
They helped me out on a job for 10 days and were blown up the next day. Top guys taken way too soon. They always remind me how precious life is and how easily it can be snuffed out!
Unfortunately although kit improved people still died.
Since my (nowadays occasional) stalking is all paid-for guided stalking, I choose to use the guide's rifle, under the estate provision. Which means that, with a new guide I try to familiarise myself with it as best I can before the stalk. Usually they are Tikkas or Sakos which I think I understand well enough, but I have also been presented with a couple of less familiar ones. Perhaps naively I assume that the guide's own personal rifle, and choice of ammunition, will be well kept and suited to their grounds and likely deer species.
Sadly, I have found the quality of some guiding to be, ahem, variable.
The worst one really annoyed me. We had discussed what I expected, in particular I am a lefty and prefer to carry muzzle-up, so I wanted him to walk to my right hand side. Yet I constantly found he had reverted to walking to my left, and on one occasion he chastised me for "poking the muzzle in his face" (he had yet again crept up right behind me on my LHS when I had stopped to scan with my binos.) I had to give him a piece of my mind. He also had a bad habit of getting in front of me and talking too loudly. I prefer silence, with perhaps a tap on the shoulder and a hand gesture to alert me to something, then a whispered discussion. Or vice-versa (he seemed to be lets say selectively blind, and when I did spot deer he declared both of them to be not shootable (they absolutely were). Seemed very flat-footed too, constant rustling of leaves, crunching of gravel, snapping of twigs etc.
I learned absolutely nothing from him. None of the pointing out of interesting things like browse lines, slots, deer paths, predicting where there might be deer, quietly scanning with binos to try to spot them etc. which usually add greatly to the enjoyment.
He also wouldn't let me check zero on his rifle, insisting that it was "spot on". It turned out that he only had six rounds of ammo, in total, because the "chap who reloads for me" had run out of primers and was now on holiday so he wouldn't be re-supplied for at least a couple of weeks, and he only had a hold allowance of ISTR 50 rounds !
All in all a classic case of being taken for a long (expensive) walk. Such a shame, because there were deer there, but I got the firm impression that he didn't actually want me to shoot any, nor fancied extracting them afterwards.
FWIW when I do check zero I invariably find that the heavier calibres shoot, for me, off my left shoulder, about 1" high and right, which is fine, I can allow for that. But I do like to confirm it first, preferably off my sticks rather than prone (I've never shot a deer from prone).
Just read those obituaries...what a horrible loss.Jackal's didn't stop bombs either sadly. Whenever that comes up I remember these two:
Corporal Dean Thomas John and Corporal Graeme Stiff killed in Afghanistan
It is with great sadness that the Ministry of Defence must confirm the deaths of Corporal Graeme Stiff and Corporal Dean John of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers in Helmand province on Sunday 15 March 2009.
They helped me out on a job for 10 days and were blown up the next day. Top guys taken way too soon. They always remind me how precious life is and how easily it can be snuffed out!
Alan
Even the humble air rifle, FAC or not, is capable of doing a lot of damage. E.g. see
Magazine fed PCPs really do need careful handling, all to easy to leave a pellet in the barrel without realising, and no real way of proving that they are clear other than shooting them off into a safe backstop.
If my link doesn't work properly, fast forward to about 21 minutes.
PS: useful info. at the beginning about how to cook up your own ballistic gelatine slabs for terminal ballistics experiments.
Magazine fed PCPs really do need careful handling, all to easy to leave a pellet in the barrel without realising, and no real way of proving that they are clear other than shooting them off into a safe backstop.
If my link doesn't work properly, fast forward to about 21 minutes.
PS: useful info. at the beginning about how to cook up your own ballistic gelatine slabs for terminal ballistics experiments.
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StephenToast
Well-Known Member
Not a stalking or game shooting incident but one that always makes me shudder - this little boy was the nephew of my wife's best friend from school days. BBC NEWS | England | Wiltshire | Tributes to air rifle death boy
I have heard the full account of what took place and won't go into it all here but the accident was basically caused by inexperience and inadequate supervision (the latter in a number of key areas).
It's so easy to become careless through frequent handling - I regularly remind myself of this horrible event and do my absolute best to ensure that there is no chance of AD/ND and furthermore that if one should occur it causes no risk.
I have heard the full account of what took place and won't go into it all here but the accident was basically caused by inexperience and inadequate supervision (the latter in a number of key areas).
It's so easy to become careless through frequent handling - I regularly remind myself of this horrible event and do my absolute best to ensure that there is no chance of AD/ND and furthermore that if one should occur it causes no risk.
Oracle
Well-Known Member
Over the years I have met several “stalkers”, albeit usually of the older generation, who have adopted the practice of “easing springs” on a chambered round, and happily “stalk” deer with the firing pin either resting on or in close proximity to the primer.
geoffw
Well-Known Member
Does that make you the common denominator Malc?
Foxyboy43
Well-Known Member
Hmmm! Worrying and I really do not see the point - is “easing” really required? I have never done it and in 50 years have never had a “lazy” spring misfire. Also begs the question - if the pin is “resting on or in close proximity to the primer” then if the rifle is jarred/dropped will this set the round off? I would need a lot of convincing that this practice is other than a disaster just waiting to happen.
geoffw
Well-Known Member
Rust + An Overdose of Manliness poisoning
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